To:A. G. SHLYAPNIKOV

Written:Written on October 31, 1914Published:First published in 1924 inLenin Miscellany II.

      Sent from Berne to Stockholm.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages170-172.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Für Alexander

DearFriend,

Intwo or three days you will receive our Central Organ,
and then I hope there will be complete “harmony” of our
views. Frankly speaking, I am a little afraid whether some
of the steps you have taken may not be interpreted in the
sense that you are ignoring our legitimate representative
in the International Socialist Bureau—Mr. Litvinoff, 76.
High Street. Hampstead. London, N. W. Of course, such
an interpretation will be a malicious distortion, but all
the same be more careful.

Troelstrahas deceived you, or led you into error. He
is an arch-opportunist, and an agent of the intrigues of the
most scoundrelly centre of the most scoundrelly
opportunists—the German Social-Democrats (headed by Kautsky,
who basely defends the opportunists), with their most
foulVorstand. We shall not attend any conferences or join
in any steps, taken on the initiative of scoundrels like them.
We will stand aside: let them disgrace themselves! For
they, having disgraced themselves once, will disgrace
themselves again. The French have already rejected their
intrigues, and without the French there can be only a dirty
comedy acted by dirty blackguards.

Larin,to all appearances, is swindling you without
scruple. If he expresses his “confidence” in the GermanVorstand, I can well understand that Troelstra has “taken
note of it”. Of course he would!! Confidence in the rottenest
opportunists!! For God’s sake correct what can be corrected,and don’t express the least confidence, direct or indirect,
in any of the opportunists, either German or French.
Pannekoek is right: the Second International is dead for ever.
It was killed by the opportunists (and not by “
parliamentarism”, as the slow-witted Pannekoek put it). “Papering
over” the differences is only a petty intrigue, andwemust
takenopart in it, either direct or indirect.

Weshall try to send you a couple of leaflets shortly.
Don’t go away, have patience. Arrange everything I wrote
to you about, wait until the Central Organ has reached
Russia, wait until we reach acompleteunderstanding with
the Russian colleagues too (both with Kamenev and with
others), after they have received the Central Organ. Before
all this has been done there can be no thought of your
departure. It would be premature for us as yet to
leave.[2]Find
out, by the way, whether Social-Democratic things can
be printed in Sweden (as for example, our Central Organ).

PoorGorky! What a pity that he has disgraced himself
by putting his signature under that rotten little paper
of the Russian liberal
gentry.[3]Both Meshkovsky and
Plekhanov and others (including Maslov and Smirnov)
have sunk to the same level.

Makesure of getting and rereading (or get someone to
translate to you) Kautsky’sWeg zur
Macht[1]—what

he
wrote there about the revolution of our times!!

Andwhat a scoundrel he has become now, renouncing all
this!

Ourjob now is a merciless war on chauvinism, covered
up by chatter about defence of the “fatherland” etc.,
especially on the “socialist chauvinism” of Plekhanov,
Guesde, Kautsky (the worst of the lot, the hypocrite!) and Co.
Defending the revolution (bourgeois in Russia and socialist
in the West), we preach it in wartime too. Our watchword
is civil war. It is all purest sophistry that this watchword
is unsuitable, etc., and so forth. We cannot “make” it,
but we preach it and we work in that direction. In every
country preference should be given to the struggle against
the chauvinism of theparticularcountry, to awakening of
hatred of one’sowngovernment, to appeals (repeated,insistent, numerous, tireless) to the solidarity of the workers
of the warring countries, to theirjointcivil war against
the bourgeoisie.

Noone will venture toguaranteewhen and to what extent
this preaching will be “justified” in practice:that is not
the point(only base sophists renounce revolutionary
agitation because they don’t know when the revolution will take
place). The point is to work on thoselines.Onlythat work
is socialist, not chauvinist. And italonewill bear socialist
fruit, revolutionary fruit.

Thewatchword of peace now is absurd and mistaken
(especiallyafter thebetrayalby almost all the leaders up
to and including Guesde, Plekhanov, Vandervelde,
Kautsky). In practice it would mean petty-bourgeois moaning.
But we must remain revolutionariesin war conditions too.
And must preach theclass struggleamong the troops also.

Allthe best. Write more often.

Yours,Lenin

[1]Pathto Power.—Ed.

[2]Toimprove connections with Party organisations in Russia Lenin tried
to find out through some of the comrades whether it would be possible for
him to move from Switzerland to Sweden or Norway. The move did not take
place.

[3]Theproclamation “From Writers, Artists and Actors” was written in a
spirit of bourgeois patriotism and justification of tsarist Russia’s
participation in the war. It appeared over the signatures of several
prominent figures in the world of letters and the arts, including Maxim
Gorky.